Weeks and Weeks
by Val-Creative
Summary: Lord Asriel goes missing after leaving by airship. She's like an hourglass, spilling, counting away the minutes until Lyra is no more.


**.**

**.**

She didn't want Pantalaimon to change. A long time ago.

Growing up seemed dreadful. _Hellish_. All of the people who were much older than Lyra… they had the strangest and frightful reasons for doing what they did. To protect her. To kill her. To kill _each other_. Lyra didn't want to grow up and be like that.

Turning fifteen, Lyra keeps mostly to herself. She remains on friendly terms with professors and other girls from St. Sophia's College, knowing only half of their names, leaving abruptly during socialising hours in the Hall. They're a little frightful of her as well. Lyra can disappear like thinning smoke off of glass, backing out of a conversation and walking so lightly as if never there. It's no magic or devilry or witching. She just can. They've seen Lyra without her daemon, as she runs through low-lit, cobbled roads on her way to Jordan, her hands clenched together. Her dark brown hair whipping over her shoulders.

Mrs. Marisa Coulter could do the same — she could be away from her own daemon — and Lyra wants no part of the comparison. Her mother spent a lifetime purposely distancing from her golden monkey daemon, abusing him, unnaming him. _Hating_ him.

Pantalaimon can only wander around without her since they separated, chasing mice through the Library's gate, and speaking with other daemons. She loathes it, but _never_ could loathe him. Only herself. Lyra understands this is who _they_ are now. He likes dozing on the mock battlements facing the south-end corner where Lyra hides. It's a small parapet on the roof to the Lodge Tower where they spend the earliest of mornings and the latest of the evenings before bed. No-one can see them.

A warm breeze ruffles against Lyra's plainly-patterned dress. She's taken off her knitted, maroon socks and her flats, thumping herself back to the sun-warmed stone and daydreaming. The trapdoor across the rooftop's entrance lurches open.

Silvery-black fur gleams into view. Lord Asriel's daemon bounds out first, her rumbling yowl slightly vibrating the air around Lyra and her daemon. It's not hostile. She appears to be guardedly considering her surroundings, looking to a deeply perplexed Lyra, and then looking to Pantalaimon. He lifts his head and twitches his little whiskers at her familiar and powerful arrival.

Lord Ariel appears right after his daemon, groaning with effort as he hoists himself up and out of the trapdoor. It sounds more like one of Stelmaria's growls than his own voice. "What have I told you about coming up here?" he says.

"… that if I got caught by anyone… you'll let them punish me?"

Lyra says this with slow-mocking deliberation.

It earns her the briefest hint of a smirk on Lord Asriel's mouth. He comes to her and sits down. She can't help but smile brightly and toothily, peeking out of the corners of her eyes to her father. He's left without his worn leather jacket, and instead seeking her out in a pair of dark slacks and a heavy, form-fitting jumper so green and so soft in sensation that Lyra imagines running her fingers over it would feel like caressing silky jungle leaves.

"How are you with Dame Hannah Relf?" Lord Asriel whispers, gazing down solemnly on her.

She doesn't answer at first. Lyra's pulse flutters into the walls of her throat. Her fingers skim over the fabric-like pages transcribed haphazardly with dried, smudged ink. Her own note-work about the alethiometer's symbols and their meanings.

"Fine."

"Have you made any friends?"

Lyra shakes her head, continuing to stare down blindly at the reference book. It's more of a tome, really — the bindings cracked and dusty. Animal-hide strings. Everything's falling apart, from cover to leaf to headband, smelling of varnish and foul old men.

"No."

"What have I told you about lying to me?"

"_Says the liar_," she mutters bitterly.

Lord Asriel exhales, gruff and in a near-snarl, loud enough for her to hear it, and she can sense the tension building. His daemon rumbles out once again. Pantalaimon, however, settles himself cozily as a pine marten, draped against the high, dingy stone. By now, Lord Asriel might have jostled her shoulder or grabbed her wrist painfully for Lyra's show of disobedience, but they're well past that. They're more _equal_ now than their father-daughter, or uncle-niece, relationship previously allowed.

It's been two years or so since they made it back to their own world. Nothing has been easy. Lyra doesn't know if she can truly forgive Lord Asriel for sacrificing someone she loved. To a war that was lost before it even began. To a greater cause that was driven by his ambition and pride. All she had ever wanted was to be at his side, to be recognised and _loved_ by Lord Asriel.

Across Turl Street, they can hear the storks warbling and nesting on top of St. Michael's Tower. Lyra has tried before to trick them over to her, but they were loyal to St. Michael. Nothing could make them waver. She's jealous of that kind of fortitude.

"I'm going North," Lord Asriel murmurs, stern-faced but thoughtful. He stares ahead. "In two or three day's time."

Lyra can feel her heart sinking.

"_NO_—"

"I left all of my research there," he explains. Lyra gawks at him in devastated horror. "Plans and documents of interest that should not fall into the hands of the Magisterium if I still wish to see it in ruin. I'm going to discover what's left and come back." She protests again, too quiet, mouthing _no, no, no_ as Lord Asriel finally looks at her, never wavering. "I swear this to you."

She never wanted to hear about the North again. About him _leaving_ and what happened because of it.

Lyra would lie awake sometimes and think about how she found him, near the Abyss's ledge along with Will, bloodied and half-conscious and raving about Lyra's mother. _She went over. She took an angel down with her_. Lord Asriel's skull healed from its broken state, mostly, but he still could not travel the way he used to. The aches from his head-injuries never stopped. Vomiting. Hallucinations, auditory or visual. Even right this moment, Lyra can see the huge scar-gash within her father's light brown hair.

"You've never kept a promise," she says waspish, lips trembling. Her dark eyes moisten.

Lord Asriel gives a nod.

"… Now would the best time to start, wouldn't it?"

He gets up, mussing Lyra's hair with his fingers and then pulling her to stand with him. Lyra feels his rough, strong hands gently on her bare wrists and tries to navigate through these sudden worries, basking in the fondness to his steely blue eyes.

**.**

**.**

Years pass like floodwaters. He remembers their milky brown swift, laden with brushwood and drowned animals and colossal tree trunks. All of the fast-moving debris had been enough to wreck a gyptian's sturdiest boat. Asriel did what he could in The Great Flood. He knows he did. But it wasn't enough — not everyone got out, and Asriel nearly lost his baby daughter then.

He remembers, but Lyra _does no_t. All she has is someone else's memories spun into words embedding in Lyra's mind.

There's a chill in the night air. Lyra doesn't move to close the window, hunched to herself in a crimson-satin armchair and near the blazing hot fireplace to Lord Asriel's quarters. Her head bends over the light-glistening surface of the alethiometer's face. The needle hovers to the anchor and the hourglass, going back and forth rapidly, and Lyra is pretty sure that's _not_ what she was asking about.

She rubs a fist over her eyes, inhaling tightly. "Lyra, we're exhausted," Pantalaimon mumbles from her lap.

"Yes, you should rest," Lord Asriel speaks up, touching the back of Lyra's chair as he passes her. She hears the window-glass sliding shut and then the night-chill vanishing. Lyra strokes her hand absentmindedly into Pantalaimon's red-gold fur.

Her father unrolls up a number of maps on his round, chestnut-wood table. She narrows her eyes.

"You should too."

When there's only silence to greet her, and Lord Asriel's quill scratching occasionally against parchment, and Stelmaria drowsily purring by his feet, Lyra makes a face. "Why, _thank you_, Lyra," she drawls, exaggerating the deep baritone of her father's voice, "Thank you for being so _considerate_ of my needs—though I've _neglected_ yours for _most of your life_—"

Lord Asriel stiffens up, dropping the eagle-feather quill with a clink. "Lyra," he says warningly. "Don't act like a child."

"I _am_ a child. You like to remind me of this whenever you're cross."

Fed up, Lyra scoots in the armchair until she's facing her entire back to him. Her legs dangling over sideways.

Pantalaimon leaps down to the rug, yawning and exposing his sharp, small fangs. He gazes dubiously to Lord Asriel stepping around his table, approaching Lyra. A long, tired sigh escapes Lyra's father. "No, you're a young woman training herself to be an alethiometrist," he says firmly. "You may have given up my name, but I am more proud than you could know."

"You never sound like it," Lyra retorts softly, cradling the alethiometer to herself.

_"I am."_

She doesn't jolt away when Lord Asriel's fingertips drift to her temples. He circles them, remaining close behind her, applying a gradual, careful pressure until Lyra relaxes, shutting her eyes. The cushions underneath her feeling like molten, softened butter. Like she's gonna melt away. "Tilt your head forward, good," Lord Asriel encourages her, ignoring the whine for more when he removes his fingers. They relocate, squeezing and massaging the base of Lyra's neck, ridding of the internal strain.

Her shoulders scrunch up, and then release, when Lord Asriel's hands grip there. "Ss'nice," Lyra croaks lowly.

"Go to sleep, Lyra," he replies, setting a kiss to her crown.

**.**

**.**

Maybe that's the bigger problem, Lyra thinks. She doesn't _listen_. She stays up too late for finishing the coursework of her lessons, and reading pile after pile of books illuminated in the tapers of Bodleian Library. She cries too easily about anything happening and trust too easily and wants to put her heart and soul into fixing the wrongs into rights. She has nightmares.

Too many nightmares.

_It all fell down like rain. All of the Dust, gold, glimmering, eerily comforting. Lyra fell, too, plunging down the slippery, loosened rocks of the cliffside and below into the vast stretch of blackness. Unable to scream. Her body convulsed in the fear__… she_…

_Will moaned out, the rope wrapping to his hand sodden with his blood. His little finger and ring finger fell off__… she_…

_The scent of herbs and powders hit Lyra's nostrils. She struggled against the hold of a forced, terrifying sleep, yelping when her mother struck her. The swollen heat of a new, reddening facial welt kept her alert. Lyra could hear her mother's sickly soothing voice, and could taste the boiling, poisonous water in her mouth, as it choked her, lulled her, as she fell asleep__…. she fell__… she_…

_She…_

_She couldn't breathe…_

"Lyra."

_Couldn't breathe…_

"Lyra, I'm here," Lord Asriel says, calm and earnest. His daughter wakes after thrashing so violently, her limbs going paralyzed. Lyra's eyes half-mast. She's more scared than Lord Asriel has seen her in a while. "Breathe in slowly." He takes a deep, steadying inhale with her. "You're alright. You're safe. Breathe in and move your fingers, Lyra. You can do this."

She… she's _not_ suffocating, drugged and helpless… Lyra twitches the fingers in her right hand, whimpering. She tries to focus on her father leaning over her. His overly concerned expression. There's more grey-silver shining in his hair than ever.

When her body slowly cooperates, and she can roll on Lord Asriel's sheets, Lyra bursts into tears. She hugs him, clinging onto Lord Asriel's middle, burying her face into his side. One of his hands rubs over her upper back, wrinkling her lace-hemmed nightgown. She can't sleep. She _can't sleep_ unless he's there. Not ever. She's _tired_. Frightened of the vast stretch of blackness behind her eyelids.

"I'm right here, shhh…" Lord Asriel murmurs, waiting for his snow leopard daemon to curl around him, nuzzling against him with all of her warmth and affection, calming the _despair_ roaring inside him. So he can be calm for Lyra. "I'm here with you…"

**.**

**.**

_You're leaving tomorrow_…

_First light._

That part of their conversation echoes in Lyra's head. It's been well over two weeks since she's seen Lord Asriel's airship vanish into the clouds. Yesterday, she and Pantalaimon argued over something silly, like eating black bread — and now, he refuses to talk to her.

Anchored to her gloomy mood, Lyra skips her classes and heads into the kitchens of Jordan College. They're preparing for supper, dragging out bags of flour and onions and potatoes. Goose eggs. Salads of spinach, chickpeas, and turnip greens. Racks of cooked lamb dripping in fat. She seats herself in the commotion, on a stool and in front of Bernie Johansen.

"That's not natural, Miss Silver," he frets in disapproval, listening to her ranting. "You and your daemon need to be together."

Lyra _pfftts_!

"En't… nothin' I can do 'bout that," she says indignantly, lightheaded from the sweet orange-scented wine she's been consuming for the past hour. Lyra raises her arms in wide-eyed defiance. The wine bottle sloshes. "I died! Benny, w'at am I suppose to do!"

One of the older women rushes by, snatching Lyra's bottle. "Not drink your life away!" she hollers. All of the occupants of the kitchens erupt with uproarious laughter, as a bleary-eyed Lyra chases after her, half-pleading. One of the serving girls grabs onto Lyra's waist, twirling her playfully. Another servant bangs on a pot like he's drumming. A boy no more than Roger's age when Lyra first met him. He drums, and Lyra spins, woozy and happily confused, into the arms of another pretty, giggling serving girl dancing. Her cadence leaps into Lyra's pulse. One of the bakers scolds them, grinning merrily as Lyra dances too.

Then suddenly, it goes quiet.

"Lyra," the Master of Jordan College announces from the kitchen's main-entrance. Lyra stops dancing, feeling whoever is holding her dropping their hands. He's dressed in his usual elegant robes. Indigo-purple hanging off him. His raven daemon caws out softly in acknowledgement. "We need to speak alone."

He's never come to the kitchens. Not once. It wasn't _proper_ for someone deemed a College's Master.

"_Wha_—?" Lyra mutters, dazed.

"Come, come," the Master beckons her, gentling her, taking hold of Lyra's arm and walking her into another corridor. She finds herself in the Master's private office, lowered into a sit and having the older gentleman join her to the velvety, purple chaise.

"It was my fault, Dr Carne," she babbles. Lyra's flushed cheeks darken. "_Please_—pleaseplease, don't be mad at Benny—I only had a little wine—"

"There has been an accident, Lyra," he interrupts. The Master's features rigid.

Something invisible and hard ram right into Lyra's guts.

"During the expedition, we believe something went wrong during their temporary stay in one of your father's laboratories. Faulty equipment or a gas-leak being the cause of the explosion. Lord Asriel was accounted for there before we lost contact." The Master clasps Lyra's pale fingers into his, sounding so grim and _consoling_ all at once. "There have been no survivors declared."

It feels like her emotions have turned into crystalline icy bubbles. Fragile. Ready to shatter.

"I'm very sorry this must be said—"

"May I be excused?" Lyra whispers so softly. Tears glint, overflowing in her dark eyes but never falling. She can't fall. Not now.

"_Lyra_—"

"Thank you," she deadpans, pulling away from the Master unmoving and watching her in stunned bewilderment.

**.**

**.**

Once outside of the office, Lyra realizes she's breathing erratically. All of the colour has drained out from her face. That previous lightheadedness returns. She saw him. She _saw him_ on the airship's platform before take-off, solemn and proud and maudlin. Lyra jumped into his arms, right before the wind kicked up, feeling Lord Asriel's dark scuff to her skin. His opened mouth holding to her forehead, mumbling for her to _let go_.

_Let him go._

**.**

**.**

She's like an hourglass, spilling, counting away the minutes until Lyra is no more.

Over the eminence of Melrose Quadrangle, and across Yaxley Quadrangle where the Chapel and its stone pinnacles rise above, Lyra heads to another rooftop further away from the Scholars briskly pacing towards the evening service. Flatter and dense. She stands off the edge, hyperventilating, finally _screaming_ at the top of her lungs. _Screaming_. _Screaming_ with such a force that the rooks billow into the air above her like tiny pinpricks of shadows.

Lyra keeps screaming, doubling over, her face wet and contorting.

Before she was even old enough to understand it, all of the adults lied to her. Every time they lied when Lyra asked them questions. They told her she was orphan, and that Lord Asriel was her uncle, and he _lied_. He told her that Lyra's parents died while in their airship. She used to think Lord Asriel would never come back. _Every time_. Every time he went onto an airship, and that Lord Asriel would _die_ like her parents.

But… Lord Asriel was _her father_… and those parents never existed.

(And now the only one she had left truly died.)

She _is_ an orphan, Lyra tells herself, gasping and clutching at her breast. Her foot nears to the roof's end. Pantalaimon should be there in this empty hand of hers, against Lyra's breast, squirming, murmuring for Lyra to walk back downstairs and _demand_ for evidence. Was there a body? How could they be _so sure_? Did anyone look for him and for how long?

"Lyra, don't—"

Pantalaimon, flashing red-gold against the dying sunlight, goes upright and perches up on his hindquarters to a roof-tile behind her. He stares, full of grief and disbelief. Lyra turns, staring and blinking out more hot, free-falling tears. She could fall _too_.

"Lyra," he murmurs.

She snaps out of it, lurching towards her daemon and weeping. Pantalaimon leaps into her arms, nosing into her dark hair, feeling her tremble and her tear-damp kisses against him, telling her he's _sorry, sorry, I'm sorry, Lyra, you're not alone, not ever_—

**.**

**.**

The nightmares do come back.

Lyra wakes, struggling and thrashing before locked herself in place, unable to breathe normally. Eventually, she fades out, and wakes to Pantalaimon snuggling himself under the fold of Lord Asriel's night-shirt hung to her. He curls up to Lyra's heart.

She refuses to leave this bed. Not for anything. She would lie in Lord Asriel's pillows, every single night he was gone, trying to absorb his warmth left behind. His presence. The scent of his cologne and musk when Lyra pushed her face in. She didn't want to _forget_. His pillows may have lost his warmth, but if Lyra pushes herself deep enough, she can sense him. Far, far away.

**.**

**.**

So many people volunteer to go North. To find Lord Asriel.

More than Lyra ever expected.

He was never an easy man to understand, not to her — but he fought for what was right. He fought for the gyptians, and the poor and the sick of London. He was _admired_ and feared and respected. Lord Asriel never did it all for himself. He wanted a better world, and _better_ people to find inspiration through words and action done. John Faa proclaims he will head the search party hosted by the gyptian people. Over three hundred gyptians volunteered. Anyone who could not join was asked to look after Lord Asriel's daughter, to protect her if necessary.

Ma Costa, however, refuses to let anyone near Lyra, volunteering to be a landloper until they've returned with Lord Asriel. She takes over for Mrs. Lonsdale in caring for the fifteen-year-old girl like she's an infant once more. Babying her. Making her eat and washing her by hand.

"Hush, hush now, you're gonna get through this," Ma Costa coos, touching Lyra's nape as the girl quivers. "I'm right here."

**.**

**.**

Weeks and weeks pass like floodwaters. Drowning her. Keeping Lyra submerged in a haze of nothing and _everything_ there ever was to feel. Pain. Rage. Mourning. Defeat. Hope. No-one talks about hope, but that's all she _will ever have_.

Lyra wanders through a set of spiraling stairs of wrought iron, narrowly avoiding getting caught.

They want to find her. Talk to her.

The Master… the Librarian… Benny… Mrs. Lonsdale… Ma Costa… she doesn't want to _talk_.

In the distance, she can hear cheering. Lyra glimpses out of Oratory's topmost window, frowning, adjusting the collar of her black-satin dress. All she sees is a gathering of Scholars near one of the footpaths leading in, throwing up their hats and clapping. John Faa walks a man down the flagstones, gripping their arms tightly and looking rather pleased with himself.

Her frown lessens. The man is gaunt and limping, but there's no mistaking Lord Asriel's steely blue eyes.

She throws herself out of the window, jamming it open to fit her. Lyra slides down the steep, tar-blackened slope of roof, nearly flinging herself over. Elation, delirious and scintillating and blaring, races through her veins. It _can't_ be — _it has to be _—

Pantalaimon goes ahead of her, bounding to Stelmaria who halts, her leopard ears flicking. She's weak, but meets him halfway, collapsing with him onto the flagstones and winding her paws around his form. Her fangs dig a little into Pantalaimon's neck. Stelmaria mewls, opening her jaws to lick benevolently over the top of his head, listening to him rumble out in contentment.

Lyra throws herself around the Scholars, calling out, hurrying into a distraught Lord Asriel who kneels down with her. He embraces her, shuddering and crying without any noise. His gloved-fingers claw into Lyra's silky, dark hair, pressing their faces together. Lyra sobs angrily, fisting his button-up shirt, refusing to let go,_ you're never leaving me, never, never_, looking him in the eye as her father nods. He mumbles Lyra's name, cupping Lyra's reddened, wet face, kissing over her eyelids fluttering shut.

**.**

**.**

Buried alive in snow and icy rock.

Lord Asriel was near-starved and frozen by the time a volunteer found him, and couldn't stand or sit on his own. He lost his toes, but not his fingers. Dead skin on Lord Asriel's ears, the tip of his nose and his lips, needing to be removed. His weight far too under what's deemed healthy.

Her father doesn't say it aloud, but Lyra knows he's thinking it: the Magisterium _did this_. She's starting to believe it.

(And they'll pay for it.)

(She swears it.)

**.**

**.**

"You look terrible," Lyra whispers, smiling and tucking herself under his chin, ignoring a harsh pinch to her side.

"_Lyra_—"

She pinches back.

"Go to sleep."

**.**

**.**


End file.
